Category Archives: Medicine

If you were asked to prepare a PowerPoint presentation then you can use google to search for already prepared ones.

I am a Medical students. Through the following method, I can easily locate tens of presentations related to common topics in Medicine.

So, how to ask google to show results that are PowerPoint presentations?

In the main page of google, type the topic you want to search for. For example, “Pneumonia”. However, to only get results that are PowerPoint presentations, you need to add the following: “Filetype:ppt” or “Filetype:pptx“. PPT and PPTX are the extensions of PowerPoint files. See the images below:

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In Mu’tah faculty of Medicine, and Jordan University faculty of Medicine, there is no formal teaching or training to allow Medical students to conduct research by themselves. Almost certainly, this runs also on the remaining two faculties of Medicine in Jordan (At Jordan University of Science and Technology, and Hashemite University). I haven’t read or heard about the situation there so I can’t confirm this conclusion.

Back to Mu’tah and Jordan Universities, preparing a research, not to mention publishing one, is not part of the degree requirements to become a medical doctor. Therefore, students do research as an extracurricular activity.

During the past two years, I had the luck of dealing with many students doing research. One important thing that struck me is that many students have a misconception of how much contribution is enough to make someone eligible to be a co-author. During a study that I took part in, I asked some friends of mine to help me with distributing questionnaires and collecting them from university students. A comment that I always seemed to hear, “Well, I have collected 100+ questionnaires for you so far, why do not you make me a co-author with you in this study?”. Many think that if they simply help in data gathering, doing a literature review, data entry, data analysis, etc., then they can be eligible for authorship. But what could I have told them? From now on, I will be citing the following which happened with a colleague of mine.

My colleague submitted a paper to the Saudi Medical Journal (SMJ). As part of the reviewing process, SMJ sent him the following regarding who should qualify to be an author. The following would be a very good explanation to anyone who is new to the world of research:

“Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Acquisition of funding, collection of data or general supervision of the research group, alone does not justify authorship.”

To sum it up, to be eligible for authorship doesn’t only require you to finish one task; be it a literature review, study design, data collection, data entry, data analysis, or manuscript writing. On the contrary, becoming a co-author means a combination of all of the above. Or at least, most of which.

Finally, as I sometimes say when I finish my talk about research: Happy researching!

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As a medical student, I found it very hard to discover about forthcoming medical conferences in Jordan. The website of Jordan Medical Association, unfortunately, doesn’t provide this service.

It turned out that there is a Jordanian website that keeps track of the Medical conferences that are to be held in Jordan. This service is provided by a Jordanian Medical Magazine. This magazine, as they describe themselves in this page, are the “only specialized Medical Magazine in Jordan”. Their magazine is very interesting and is always beautifully designed. I sent a them a message on their facebook group and was sent the following link:

I do not want to be in any medical specialty related to surgery. I always thought how surgery depends more on skill than knowledge, more on working than studying, and more on short-term than long-term lasting solutions. So what if a new heart is transplanted to a patient? A new kidney? Wouldn’t it be much better if research was done to prevent damage to these organs in the first place? Wouldn’t it be much better to invent drugs that prevent hardening in the blood vessels (atherosclerosis) and eventual heart damage than to do a surgery to transplant new blood vessels to the heart (CABG)?

Moreover, many individuals frown against me when I tell them that I am not considering a specialty in surgery. The opinion of almost all whom I talked to could be summarized in that being a doctor is associated with being a surgeon. If you are not a surgeon, it is OK. But your respect is not as much as that of a surgeon. One person summarized it in the following example: “If doctors of different specialties entered into a gathering, then people would firstly greet the surgeons”.

For many years, I couldn’t prove my point of view about surgery. However, lately, it came to me in an epiphany to count the number of surgeons who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. Immediately, some persons might argue that this is not a measure of how good or bad surgery is. I partially agree with such an opinion. However, I will take the number of winners as an indicator not as a measure. That is to say, you can safely assume that a student who gets an average of 90% in high school is much more intelligent than a student who got 60%. However, it would be very unfair to say that he is better than a student of closer average like 85%.

The holders of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine are mentioned in this official page. From 1901 till 2011, the prize has been awarded 102 times to 199 individuals. Unfortunately, the page doesn’t mention the specialty of the holders. Therefore, the only way that I could think of was to read a wikipidia page called “Lists of Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine” which mentions the “rationale” for giving the Nobel Prize to each of its winners. From this rationale, one can deduce the specialty of the winners. Or at least, if someone is to argue, whether the prize was given for an achievement related to surgery.

Before giving the number of surgeons, it is worth mentioning the interesting fact about the number of female winners of the prize. Out of the total 199 winners from 1901 to 2011, the number of female winners is “10”.

The number of surgeon winners as evident by the rationale of giving the prize is not 100 (50.3%), or 50 (25.1%), it is only 2 (1.0%) [See the table below].

Therefore, can I safely conclude that surgeons haven’t made contributions to mankind significant enough so that only 1.0% of them were awarded the Nobel Prize?

A friend of mine aspiring to be a surgeon said, “But surgeons have a significant effect on the lives of many people”. I answered, “I agree with you. However, non-surgeons had a significant effect on not only the lives of many people, but on all the lives of humanity”.

For those aspiring to be surgeons, it is true that I have mentioned all of the above, but I encourage you to continue in your quest only because surgeons make a lot of money and are respected more in our society. In addition, studying for surgery is easier than studying for internal medicine and most other specialties because, again, it depends mainly on skill and work.

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Today, the 6th scientific day of my faculty of Medicine in Mu’tah Univesrity took place under the patronage of the presidenct of our University Dr. Abd Al-Raheem Al-Hnaitee. The coordinator of the event was Prof. Imad Farjou – Chairman of the scientific committee.

[Photo 1: A banner hanged in front of the faculty saying: Under the patronage of Prof. Abd Al-Raheem Al-Hnaitee, president of Mu’tah University, the faculty of Medicien is organizing the sixth scientifc day. Monday 09.04.2012…]

[Photo 2: Opening ceremony: Seen in the image is the president of Mu’tah University Dr. Abd Al-Raheem Hnaitee and dean of the faculty of Medicine in Mu’tah University Dr. Bassam Neshewat. Source: Almadenah News, 09.04.2010, click here!]

Do Universities in the Arab World Care About Scientific Research?

In a press conference about the scientific day held on Saturday, 07.04.2012, the dean of our Faculty Dr. Bassam Neshewat said the following:

Tomorrow, the faculty of medicine in Mu’tah University is organizing a scientific day to encourage the students of the faculty to present scientific researches… and Dr. Neshewat showed that 21 scientific researches and 18 scientic lectures will be presented in the scientic day… considering that the scientific day is a chance for the students to exchnage knowledge and scientic and practical experience and encourage students to care for scientic research in the different scientific knowledges.”

In a previous article of me regarding scientific research in the Arab world, I tried to find reasons why only 3 Arab Universities are ranked among the top 500 world universities (according to ARWU) while Isarael has 7 universities in the same list. In it I wrote:

“Do universities in the Arab world care about scientific research? Do our universities provides incentives to both doctors and students to do scientific research?”

Can we deduce from the statements of the dean that the answer is No? At least to the first question?

Some might say, “Actions speaks louder than words”. Well, I have experienced the above statement practically. Today, Moa’bite was an “action”!

Today, some of the 21 scientific researches in the scientific day were presented by students who took part in these researches. Out of at least 11 students who spoke, Moa’bite was the speaker in two different researches. How can such a student complain that his University doesn’t care about scientific research?

This is the certification that I recived today. Unfortunately, although I participated in two researches, I was only given one certificate of acknowledgement regarding this fact. Why? Is it because they do not mention the name of the research? I do not know and I am afraid that this will cause me not to be able to have accreditation of my research in my future CV. The Certificate says: “A Certification of Appreciation to certify that Jameel Hijazeen* has participated in the 6th scientific day as speaker/5th **year student (Not 6th year)”

* Hijazeen not Hjazeen ** Not “6th year student” but “5th year student”

On the other hand, I and my colleagues found a great difficulty in finding sponsoring doctors who donated their efforts and times to help us in preparing a research, but most importantly, to include us in the possible future publication of the research!

Producers… Not Only Consumers: One reason why I spent many days and nights in these two researches:

Back in school, one teacher of mine once said something like the following (I am paraphrasing):

We Arabs are only consumers… We do not produce anything! Let us do a simple experiment! Let everyone of you [students] check what he wears or owns now in the class room; Your shoes are from this country, your watches are from that country, the clothes that you wear… Even your flesh, if you think about it, is the result of food that is produced in foreign countries”

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Yesterda I luckily had the chance of participating in a free medical day in Al-Aghwar Al-Janobieh organized by my faculty. This event was under the patronage the head of Mu’tah University, Dr. Abd Al-Rahman Al-Hneati.

[Photo: A speech at the opening ceremony]

Out of 800+ medical studnets in Mu’tah University, I was the only one who participated in this activity. I don’t know why other students were not invited. Personally, I was invited by Dr. Khaleel Al-Salem, my Ophthalmology doctor in Mu’tah University (Thank you my dear doctor!). It felt weird to be the only student. Therefore, I believe that my invitation was a mistake… A beautiful mistake though!

Most of the patients were femlaes and children. Most interstingly, and for the first time in my life, I saw children as young as 9 or 10 years seeking medical advice without any adult accompanying them; not a parent, a grandparent, an older sibling, etc.

I attended the Ophthalmology clinic with Dr. Khalil. He examined about 20-30 patients. He freely distributed medications which he brought with him. The number of patients in other clinics was larger. I don’t how much larger, but here is a comment that has been made in a Jordanian website from a person who called himself “a participant in the free medical day”:

More than 100 patients have been seen in the dermatology clinic alone by Dr. Khetam Al-Rfooa, and about 50 patients by Dr. Seham… and others…